A quick recap; our road are crap. Our roads need repair. The legislature's only way to do so was by a complex shell game that included raising the state's sales tax by 1% and sending it out for a statewide vote.
Well the vote was the day before I went on vacation... and it failed by a 4 to 1 ratio.
I heard all kinds of arguments as to why someone wasn't going to vote for it. But the worst one has to be this:
"I'm not going to vote for it because this is the wrong way to fix the roads. If we vote this down the legislature will have to try again and do it right this time. Voting no will teach them a lesson."
I'm fairly good at arguing a point. I can often change people's minds to my way of thinking... but I couldn't change a single mind. And this wasn't just a purely partisan problem. Both the democrats and republicans were all for it. They brought out unions and business leagues, former democrat and republican governors, the current republican governor and the recent democrat senator (who served for like 25 years).
And the people I were talking to were all over the board politically.
Well, the republican's (who control all branches of government in Michigan) came out with their new plan. Let's go over the old plan first:
Remove all sales taxes from gasoline. Take the gasoline tax away from the retail pump price and apply it to the wholesale price. Up that tax a bit and put ALL of it to roads and public transportation. Up the registration fees on cars (and double wammy hit the hybrids and electric cars since they don't use as much gas), again putting all of that money into the roads. Replace the missing money (there is a LOT of sales tax revenue from the sale of gasoline) by raising the state sales tax on all other things by 1 % (from 6 to 7%). That money would mainly go to the state education fund and to the local governments. The democrats saw that as taxing the poor, so they added in a provision which would have raised the earned income tax credit for the poor.
Now that's a lot of moving around to get to this... raise the state sales tax and put the extra revenue toward the roads. The part about the money primarily going to the state education fund and local governments was mainly because that's where almost all state money goes. Taking the sales tax away from gasoline sales would primarily hurt the state education fund and local governments (and when I say local governments I'm talking about police and fire departments).
4 to 1 against.
"It's too complicated"
"I don't like new taxes"
"I won't bail out the legislature for not doing their job"
"It should raise taxes on the rich, not the poor"
There were plenty of reasons, but almost all of them (the people arguing against) said that the legislature needed to learn it's lesson and do this right. Their new plan?
Cut the rest of the earned income tax credit away. Take some money previously promised to the Chippawa Nation (one of the local Native American Tribes). Take some money away from the Tobacco settlement, and remove some tax insentive for the film industry.
That's certainly more simple. It doesn't even require a state wide vote so technically the legislature can 'do it's job' without asking for a vote. But oh wait.. that's not even half enough money. The rest of it will come from 'future extra revenue'. In other words hope that the state keeps getting more and more money and doesn't have another downturn in the economy.
What they're not saying, but what I'm seeing behind the lines is that when that money doesn't materialize they'll have to balance the budget by cutting other services. Like schools. Like local governments. Like the Department of Health and Human Services. Like the Department of Corrections.
Fuck.
They learned their lesson all right... don't raise taxes except for on the poor, and then cut services. Thanks people of Michigan. The legislature put up some bad legislation that would have gotten the job done, but you voted down and hoped that they would come up with better. Instead they came up with lies, fantasy, and hurting the working poor (and the actual poor) of the state.
Fuck.
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